UCLA RESEARCH CONFIRMS THAT THE U.S. MEDIA TILT LEFT

The study appears to have been carefully done but some of the detailed results are a bit weird

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly. "I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are." "Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co?author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

U.N. arrogance reined in: ""For years, United Nations diplomats were notorious for running up millions of dollars in parking tickets, then just laughing at the city's attempts to collect. Diplomatic immunity meant there was little U.S. courts could do about it. But the city's thousands of foreign officials have largely changed their ways since a threatened crackdown three years ago. According to New York's finance department, diplomats have gotten 90 percent fewer tickets since late 2002, when the U.S. threatened to revoke the plates of scofflaws and subtract however much they owed in fines from the foreign aid their countries received. Those who do get citations have gotten better about paying them. Of the 11,771 parking violations issued to diplomats in the past three years, 87 percent have been paid or successfully appealed, the city said."

Both parties disingenuous about privacy rights : "What is interesting about the concern with this right to privacy is how it has become the mantra of the American left. And it is the American right, led on the court by Justice Antonin Scalia, that has strong objections to it. Does this not strike anyone as paradoxical? American conservatives have been identified as individualists, especially when it comes to their economic views. They used to champion capitalism and the right to private property. This right they identified in the Constitution, especially the Fifth Amendment. When recently the court ran roughshod over this right in its New London (Conn.) v. Kelo ruling, the American right still voiced some protest. Indeed, its greatest hero on the court, Justice Clarence Thomas, was in the outspoken minority wishing to uphold that right. As to the right to privacy, we now have an American left -- which is notoriously anti-individualist and persistently demeans the right to private property -- declaring fidelity to it and insisting that it is part of the fabric of the Constitution"

An old-time ACLU member chides the Fascist ACLU of today: "In my judgment the ACLU of Michigan is deeply wrong to defend race preferences. We are disloyal to our own deepest principles when we do so. I may be in error about this. But if you believe that it is right to defend race preferences, say that forthrightly and give your reasons. That view will almost certainly be rejected by Michigan citizens, but at least you will then retain your good repute, and not besmirch that of the ACLU."

Mood in France turns Rightward: "The public mood in France has darkened and veered sharply to the Right in the two months since the Paris riots. Despite endless political hand-wringing over the failure of the French model of ethnic integration, the country is no closer to a national consensus about how to re-establish the core republican values of fraternity and equality. Indeed, the political centre of gravity has shifted in favour of Jean-Marie Le Pen, as Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin scramble to head off the lethal challenge from the far Right. Support for Le Pen's National Front - or at least its anti-immigrant ideology - has risen since the riots, sparking fears there will be a repeat of the 2002 presidential election, when the wily demagogue trounced the Left and almost snatched the presidency..... One in four French are in favour of Le Pen's ideas, especially regarding defence of traditional values and immigration. And 63 per cent say there are "too many immigrants in France", a 4 per cent rise since 2003. As the electorate turns increasingly inwards, heavy-handed solutions to the crisis of the French suburbs proliferate. The political elite is sending a strong message that France effectively blames its immigrants for the troubles, with renewed crackdowns on non-French residents, asylum-seekers or the "sans papiers" - illegal immigrants"

Moronic TSA again: "Sarah Zapolsky was checking in for a flight to Italy when she discovered that her 9-month-old son's name was on the United States' "no fly" list of suspected terrorists. "We pointed down to the stroller, and he sat there and gurgled," Zapolsky said, recalling the July incident at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. "The desk agent started laughing...She couldn't print us out a boarding pass because he's on the no-fly list." Zapolsky, who did not want her son's name made public, said she was initially amused by the mix-up. "But when I found out you can't actually get off the list, I started to get a bit annoyed." She isn't alone. According to the Transportation Security Administration, more than 28,000 people have applied to the TSA redress office to get on the "cleared list," which takes note of individuals whose names are similar to those on the terrorism watch list, but even getting on that list does not guarantee an end to hassles related to the no-fly list".

I am continuing to follow news about the racial tensions in Sydney on my Australian Politics blog (mirrored here).

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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